Anyone familiar with DARPA knows the agency is not averse to taking risks. Tackling really tough technological problems by funding innovative research is fundamental to its mission statement.

But with the Ubiquitous High Performance Computing (UHPC) program, DARPA is really pushing the envelope. It’s calling for nothing less than a revolution that could drastically and permanently alter the nature of computing.

In the Broad Agency Announcement (DARPA’s equivalent of an RFP) issued in March of this year, the agency made it clear it is taking no prisoners. The BAA states, “Current evolutionary approaches to progress in computer designs are inadequate. To meet the relentlessly increasing demands for greater performance and higher energy efficiency, revolutionary new computer systems designs will be essential to support new generations of advanced DoD system capabilities and enable new classes of computer application…UHPC systems designs that merely pursue evolutionary development will not be considered.”